Yearly Archives: 2015

East Providence, RI USA – October 28, 2015 – Nordson EFD, a Nordson company, a global precision fluid dispensing systems manufacturer, introduces a new series of pneumatic non-contact dispensing systems. The P-Jet and P-Dot valves and V100 controllers jet low- to high-viscosity fluids with great precision and repeatability. They are designed for use in many types of applications and multiple industries including automotive, electronics, aerospace, and medical.

NordsonThe launch of the P-Jet and P-Dot comes with EFD’s recent acquisition of Liquidyn, a Germany-based company that designs and manufactures non-contact micro dispensing valves. The company was founded in 2006 by two German engineers looking to provide manufacturers more efficient fluid dispensing options.

Benefits of the P-Jet include dispensing frequencies of up to 280Hz with dispensable volume starting at 3 nL. Both the P-Jet and P-Dot feature exchangeable nozzles and dispensing tappets to adapt to different kinds of applications. Both are easy to use and maintain featuring wetted parts that are separate from the actuator. They require low voltage of 24 V and maximum fluid pressure of 87 psi (6 bar) to operate, which are important when evaluating safety considerations. In addition, the valves can be easily integrated into production lines.

Pneumatic non-contact dispensing technology benefits include:

  • Time savings due to easier positioning of the part and high dispensing frequency and accuracy
  • Reduced part damage and contamination due to there being no contact with the part
  • Uniform fluid deposits independent of part topography and surface structure
  • Easy, safe adjustment of dispensing volumes
  • Process control

The P-Jet dispenses low- to medium-viscosity fluids such as solvents, oils, greases, silicones, paints, and fluxes in beads and lines. Common applications include filling, potting, sealing, and coating. The P-Dot dispenses higher viscosity fluids such as adhesives, lacquers, oils, greases, silicones, and fluxes in dots, beads, and lines. Attaching very small electronic components (SMD parts) onto printed circuit boards and substrates is a good application example.

“The P-Jet and P-Dot non-contact jet valves offer manufacturers a fast, simple way to generate precise, repeatable micro-deposits for even the most demanding dispensing processes,” said Peter Langer, Nordson EFD Business Unit Director – Valves. “These valves are designed to last a long time with extremely low maintenance.”

The new P-Jet and P-Dot are being featured along with other innovative EFD products recently released, including the PICO® Pµlse™ non-contact jet valve and PICO Toµch™ controller, xQR41 MicoDot™ needle valve, and Pro and EV series automated dispensing systems, at The Assembly Show (booth 823), Oct. 27-29, in Rosemont, Illinois USA.

by Dr. Guillaume Chansin, Senior Technology Analyst, IDTechEx

Quantum dots have been developed since the early 80’s but it is only recently that they made an appearance in consumer products such as TVs and tablet computers. IDTechEx Research has published a new market report on quantum dots titled “Quantum Dots 2016-2026: Applications, Markets, Manufacturers”, and as part of this study we have looked at their impact on the display industry. Is this the technology that will enable LCD to rival OLED?

Expanding color gamut

The key selling point for quantum dots is that they enable a much wider color gamut with minimal re-engineering of the LCD panels. They do this by modifying the backlight (and to some extent the color filters) inside the LCD stack.

A conventional LCD backlight uses ‘white LEDs’ which are really blue LEDs with a yellow phosphor. As a result, the white light that is produced has a strong blue peak and much weaker red and green components.

Quantum dots can be used as “downconverters”, the same way that phosphors convert blue wavelength to longer wavelengths. They key difference is that quantum dots have very narrow emission spectra and the wavelength can be tuned by changing the size of the dots. In other words, with quantum dots it is possible to have strong emission peaks in all three primaries: red, blue, and green.

The ideal solution would be to deposit the quantum dots directly on the LED (“on-chip”). But the current generation of materials degrade quickly at high temperature so they need to be physically separated from the chip (future generation materials may enable ‘on-chip’ thanks to high heat and moisture resistance).

Two workarounds are currently available. The first one is to place a tube filled with quantum dots between the LEDs and the light guide plate. QD Vision is the company commercializing this solution. While the tube can be fitted in large displays, it is not the best solution when it comes to mobile displays. The picture below shows an iMac retrofitted with a tube by QD Vision.

Source: IDTechEx Research.

Source: IDTechEx Research.

Back in 2013, QD Vision partnered with Sony to launch the first quantum dot LCD TV. QD Vision has now found more partners, including TCL launching a range of TVs and Philips commercializing the first quantum dot monitor this year.

The other integration option is to add the quantum dots as a film, an approach designed by Nanosys. The company has partnered with 3M to offer a diffuser sheet loaded with quantum dots. Because the diffuser sheet is part of a conventional backlight anyway, the display manufacturers do not need to change anything in the design of the backlight: the 3M solution is a direct drop-in replacement. Amazon was the first customer when it launched tablets with premium displays (the Kindle HDX).

The cadmium question

Quantum dots appear to offer a simple way to dramatically improve the performance of LCD panels. But there are some challenges to get the technology adopted.

First, the cost. A quantum dot film can add a significant cost to the display panel. Using tubes from QD Vision is probably more cost effective which is probably why several Chinese TV manufacturers are adopting this solution.

Second, consumers will have to be convinced that it will be worth paying a premium. Supporters of quantum dots say that it is currently the only way to obtain TV displays that are compliant with the Rec. 2020 standard. But while the specifications are impressive, it is worth noting that most consumers are not aware of the limitations of their existing LCD devices (whether TV, laptop, or tablet).

Third, the best quantum dots are made with Cadmium, an element which is usually banned in the European Union under the RoHS regulations. QD Vision and 3M have requested an exception to introduce cadmium in TVs because of the benefits in terms of lower energy consumption (thereby reducing carbon emissions). But some organizations, including Nanoco, are calling for the exception to not be extended. Nanoco supplies indium based quantum dots so would benefit from a complete ban on cadmium. Some are quick to retort that Indium is a potential carcinogen and might also be banned in the future.

While this debate is much needed to fully assess the risks, there is no denying it has also been damaging to the whole industry. Giving quantum dots a bad reputation is not the best way to get the technology widely accepted.

Nanoco has licensed their cadmium-free quantum dots to Dow Chemicals. But the optical performance of these quantum dots is not on par with the ones made with cadmium. The company believes that eventually they will be able to offer a similar level of performance. Meanwhile, Nanosys has also started to produce cadmium-free quantum dots and has licensed their technology to Samsung.

QLED as the next generation OLED?

While the main focus is currently on enhancing backlights for LCD panels, some are already looking beyond. Quantum dots can also be used to make emissive displays. So-called quantum dot LED (QLED) are similar to OLED with an active layer made with quantum dots.

Market forecast for quantum dot devices and components (Source: IDTechEx report “Quantum Dots 2016-2026: Applications, Markets, Manufacturers”)

Market forecast for quantum dot devices and components (Source: IDTechEx report “Quantum Dots 2016-2026: Applications, Markets, Manufacturers”)

This technology is still in very early stage but promises to offer the same benefits in terms of color gamut to OLED technology. QLED will in theory provide better colors and efficiency than OLED because of the narrower emission peaks. QLED can be considered as the next generation OLED.

Whether it is for downconversion or ultimately QLED, quantum dots have the potential to significantly disrupt the display industry. IDTechEx Research forecasts that quantum dots will enables a market of devices and components worth over $11bn by 2026, with a large chunk of the revenues in display applications. Quantum dots have already made serious inroads in the industry; don’t be surprised to find them in your next TV. For more information, read the full global analysis of the technology and application landscape in the report “Quantum Dots 2016-2026: Applications, Markets, Manufacturers” at www.IDTechEx.com/qd.

Growing Conference Business at Extension Media Brings Experienced Events Producer Onboard

SAN FRANCISCO, October 28, 2015 – Extension Media announced today the addition of Sally L. Bixby as Senior Events Director for Extension Media’s fast-growing conference division. She will be based in the downtown Portland, Oregon office where Extension Media has editorial staff.

Ms. Bixby is an accomplished corporate events producer with nearly 16 years of in-depth experience in operations and marketing, holding senior staff positions in multiple events projects. To date, she has managed more than 450 business conferences in North America alone and produced several internationally as well. She brings to the role a significant track record of increasing event attendance, managing large- and small-scale budgets and driving lead generation for companies such as: AMD, Avnet, Curtiss-Wright, Intel, Kontron, MathWorks and more. Throughout her career, Ms. Bixby has cultivated relationships in the embedded systems, semiconductor and medical electronics industries, as well as academia and several professional organizations, building mutually beneficial and long-term business relationships.

“We are thrilled that Sally is leading the conference operations management team and will also be focusing her energy on growing the conference and exhibition side of our business, adding several events aimed at the embedded and growing IoT market segments as well as the semiconductor manufacturing and design market,” said Vince Ridley, president and founder of Extension Media. “Her professionalism and passion for delivering successful events will benefit both Extension Media and our clients. Sally’s attention to exceeding expected goals make her an ideal fit.”

“I look forward to expanding the conference business at Extension Media, connecting knowledgeable, responsive leaders and influencers,” said Ms. Bixby. “Recent experience creating a successful China-U.S. IoT Summit for a Fortune 100 company – that resulted in 120% of the attendee goal and a 10.5% budget savings – has me looking forward to helping our clients achieve impressive results.”

Prior to joining Extension Media, Ms. Bixby was an independent senior events producer running her own company, EventBelle Productions. In 2014 and 2015, she managed all operations, budgets and the VIP program for The ConFab, the preeminent semiconductor manufacturing conference and networking event for leaders and decision-makers addressing the economics of semiconductor manufacturing.

About Extension Media
Extension Media is a privately held company operating more than 50 B2B magazines, engineers’ guides, email newsletters, web sites and conferences that focus on high-tech industry platforms and emerging technologies such as: chip design, semiconductor and electronics manufacturing, embedded systems, software, architectures and industry standards.

Extension Media produces industry leading events including The ConFab, the Internet of Things Developers Conference (IoT DevCon) and the Multicore Developers Conference (Multicore DevCon), and publishes Embedded Systems Engineering, EECatalog.com, Embedded Intel® Solutions, EmbeddedIntel.com, Chip Design, ChipDesignMag.com, Solid State Technology, Solid-State.com and SemiMD.com.

Extension Media Contacts
Vince Ridley
[email protected]
415-255-0390
Sally L. Bixby
[email protected]
503-705-8651

SAN JOSE, Calif. — mCube, provider of MEMS motion sensors, today announced the industry’s first 3-axis accelerometer which is less than a cubic millimeter in total size (0.9mm3). The MC3571 is only 1.1×1.1×0.74mm in size making it 75% smaller than current 2x2mm accelerometers on the market today, enabling developers to design high-resolution 3-axis inertial solutions for products that require ultra-small sensor form factors.

mCube_MC3571_AccelerometerThe MC3571 features a Wafer Level Chip Scale Package (WLCSP), making it smaller than a grain of sand. This achievement marks a major innovation milestone in the MEMS sensor industry and opens up new design possibilities for the next generation of sleek new mobile phones, surgical devices, and consumer products.

“The new MC3571 truly represents mCube’s vision of delivering a high-performance motion sensor in less than a cubic millimeter size,” said Ben Lee, president and CEO, mCube. “This advancement demonstrates how our monolithic technology can unleash amazing possibilities for designers to create exciting new products that could never be possible with today’s standard 2x2mm sensors.”

“mCube is the first company we’ve seen with a 1.1×1.1mm integrated MEMS+CMOS accelerometer and stretches once again the limits of miniaturization establishing new standards for the industry,” said Guillaume Girardin, Technology & Market Analyst MEMS & Sensors at Yole Développement (Yole). And his colleague, Thibault Buisson, Technology & Market Analyst, Advanced Packaging added: “Clearly, there is a growing trend among consumer companies to transition to wafer-level CSP packaging designs and with the MC3571 inertial motion sensor, mCube is at the forefront of this market evolution and at Yole, we are curious to see how competition will react.”

The high-resolution 14-bit, 3-axis MC3571 accelerometer is built upon the company’s award-winning 3D monolithic single-chip MEMS technology platform, which is widely adopted in mobile handsets with over 100 million units shipped. With the mCube approach, the MEMS sensors are fabricated directly on top of IC electronics in a standard CMOS fabrication facility. Advantages of this monolithic approach include smaller size, higher performance, lower cost, and the ability to integrate multiple sensors onto a single chip.

About the MC3571 Accelerometer

MC3571 is a low-noise, integrated digital output 3-axis accelerometer, which features the following:

  • 8, 10, or 14-bit resolution;
  • Output Data Rates (ODR) up to 1024Hz;
  • Selectable interrupt modes via an I2C bus;
  • Requires only a single external passive component, compared to competitive offerings requiring 2 or more.

Samples of the world’s smallest 1.1×1.1mm WLCSP accelerometer are available to select lead customers now with volume production scheduled for the second quarter of 2016.

 

Orlando, FLorida – At the Meeting of the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS 2015), imec and CMST (imec’s associated lab at Ghent University) present a novel technology for thermoplastically deformable electronics enabling low-cost 2.5D free-form rigid electronic objects. The technology is under evaluation in Philips LED lamp carriers, a downlight luminaire and a omnidirectional lightsource, to demonstrate the potential of this technology in innovative lighting applications.

Miniature LED dome test vehicle with integrated low power LEDs. (a) Device before forming. (b) Device after vacuum forming using a 40 mm half sphere.

Miniature LED dome test vehicle with integrated low power LEDs. (a) Device before forming. (b) Device after vacuum forming using a 40 mm half sphere.

Thanks to its energy-efficiency, excellent light quality, and high output power, light emitting diode (LED) technology is becoming the sustainable light source for the 21st century. But in addition, it also allows to design unprecedented, innovative lighting solutions. Imec and CMST’s new thermoplastically deformable electronic circuits now add a new dimension to the possibilities to fabricate novel lamp designs as well as smart applications in ambient intelligence and wearables.

The innovative technology is based on meander-shaped interconnects, a robust technique to realize dynamically stretchable elastic electronic circuits including LEDs. These are then embedded in thermoplastic polymers (e.g. polycarbonate). Following production on a flat substrate, using standard printed circuit board production equipment, the circuit is given its final form using thermoforming techniques such as vacuum forming, high pressure forming or even injection molding. Upon cooling, the thermoplastic retains its shape without inducing large internal stresses in the circuits. The method, based on standard available production processes, does not require large investments, reducing the cost of fabrication. The resulting designs have a low weight and low complexity, a high resilience, a low tooling and material cost, and a higher degree of manufacturer independence due to the standard industrial practices that are used.

The production process was developed in collaboration between the industrial and academic partners involved in the FP7 project TERASEL: imec, CMST (Ghent University), ACB, Holst Centre, Niebling Formtechnologie; Sintex NP and Philips Lighting BV. TERASEL is a European effort focusing on the development, industrial implementation and application of large-area, cost-effective, randomly shaped electronics and sensor circuit technologies.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (IDT) today announced an agreement to acquire privately held ZMDI (Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden AG) for total consideration of $310M in cash. The acquisition provides IDT with a highly regarded Automotive & Industrial business, and extends their technology leadership in high performance programmable power devices and timing & signal conditioning.

Automotive & Industrial provides a significant new growth opportunity. IDT gains immediate leverage for new designs in Wireless Charging, Power Management, and Timing & Signal Conditioning. ZMDI’s business is already well established and positioned for growth, and benefits immediately from IDT’s scale and technology.

“This move accelerates progress to our $800M annual revenue goal within our industry benchmark financial performance by over a year,” said Gregory Waters, IDT President & CEO. “IDT’s strategy is unchanged, but our product and technology position is significantly expanded. Our target market segments of Consumer, Communications, and High Performance Computing all benefit from additional product, revenue, and customer relationships that bolster our commitment to outgrow the semiconductor market by at least a factor of two.”

IDT extends their rapidly growing line of programmable power devices, with new high-power products addressing Communications Infrastructure and Data Center applications. This creates a new industry franchise for high performance, scalable power management solutions that cover applications ranging from Wireless Charging to Solid State Drives to Data Centers & 4G/5G basestations.

“We gain an exceptional group of talented people and intellectual property from ZMDI, who join one of the technology industry’s fastest growing companies. With the added benefit of IDT’s cost structure and high volume manufacturing capability, we expect ZMDI revenues to achieve a similar financial model as IDT’s existing business in the first year of combined operations,” Waters added.

ZMDI’s signal conditioning products provide an elegant interface between microcontrollers and analog components, such as sensors. This is extremely complimentary to IDT’s Advanced Timing products, and will enable intelligent systems that are aware of their surroundings, and can adjust system performance, timing, and power management automatically.

“We’re enthusiastic to join with IDT, and create the best positioned product innovation team in the mixed-signal semiconductor industry,” said Thilo von Selchow, President and CEO of ZMDI. “It’s rare to see such a potent combination that not only provides a powerful financial result, but more importantly establish the product and technology teams that will lead the industry in innovative new products and growth for this decade.”

The transaction has been unanimously approved by the board of directors of both companies, with closing expected before calendar end.

Brewer Science, Inc., and Arkema announced a partnership to produce high-quality directed self-assembly (DSA) materials for use in semiconductor manufacturing. DSA will be one of the key technologies that enable high-volume, cost-effective nanoscale manufacturing.

This partnership leverages Brewer Science’s strength based on more than 30 years of experience in advanced semiconductor materials and process solutions with Arkema’s experience of more than 20 years in block copolymer (BCP) technology and manufacturing. This combination of manufacturing and support expertise will accelerate the introduction of DSA material technology for next-generation lithography applications.

“We are excited to work with Arkema to bring this technology to market,” said Dr. Daniel Sullivan, Director of Brewer Science’s Semiconductor R&D. “Brewer Science has earned the reputation for bringing value to customers and moving the industry forward. Our goal is to provide a turnkey DSA process so customers can obtain all the materials and process knowledge needed to implement DSA quickly and cost-effectively. Combining each company’s expertise in materials and manufacturing will allow us to deliver a robust solution to the industry.”

“Arkema is committed to deliver high-quality DSA materials to the Semiconductor Market. This unique partnership will accelerate the introduction of a commercial solution in the market and provide a unique support to our future customers built on the strength of both companies,” said Ian Cayrefourcq, Scientific Director of Arkema.

Both companies plan to bring process stability to DSA by providing BCP in volume to support an entire node life with a single batch while also offering a wide range of process flexibility through a full suite of DSA materials and Arkema’s proven BCP blending process.

Graphene has generally been described as a two-dimensional structure — a single sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a regular structure — but the reality is not so simple. In reality, graphene can form wrinkles which make the structure more complicated, potentially being applied to device systems. The graphene can also interact with the substrate upon which it is laid, adding further complexity. In research published in Nature Communications, RIKEN scientists have now discovered that wrinkles in graphene can restrict the motion of electrons to one dimension, forming a junction-like structure that changes from zero-gap conductor to semiconductor back to zero-gap conductor. Moreover, they have used the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope to manipulate the formation of wrinkles, opening the way to the construction of graphene semiconductors not through chemical means — by adding other elements — but by manipulating the carbon structure itself in a form of “graphene engineering.”

The tip of the scanning tunneling microscope (in yellow-orange) is moved over the graphene and the nanowrinkle.

The tip of the scanning tunneling microscope (in yellow-orange) is moved over the graphene and the nanowrinkle.

The discovery began when the group was experimenting with creating graphene films using chemical vapor deposition, which is considered the most reliable method. They were working to form graphene on a nickel substrate, but the success of this method depends heavily on the temperature and cooling speed.

According to Hyunseob Lim, the first author of the paper, “We were attempting to grow graphene on a single crystalline nickel substrate, but in many cases we ended up creating a compound of nickel and carbon, Ni2C, rather than graphene. In order to resolve the problem, we tried quickly cooling the sample after the dosing with acetylene, and during that process we accidentally found small nanowrinkles, just five nanometers wide, in the sample.”

They were able to image these tiny wrinkles using scanning tunneling microscopy, and discovered that there were band gap openings within them, indicating that the wrinkles could act as semiconductors. Normally electrons and electron holes flow freely through a conductor without a band gap, but when it is a semiconductor there are band gaps between the permitted electron states, and the electrons can only pass through these gaps under certain conditions. This indicates that the graphene could, depending on the wrinkles, become a semiconductor. Initially they considered two possibilities for the emergence of this band gap. One is that the mechanical strain could cause a magnetic phenomenon, but they ruled this out, and concluded that the phenomenon was caused by the confinement of electrons in a single dimension due to “quantum confinement.”

According to Yousoo Kim, head of the Surface and Interface Science Laboratory, who led the team, “Up until now, efforts to manipulate the electronic properties of graphene have principally been done through chemical means, but the downside of this is that it can lead to degraded electronic properties due to chemical defects. Here we have shown that the electronic properties can be manipulated merely by changing the shape of the carbon structure. It will be exciting to see if this could lead to ways to find new uses for graphene.”

Reference

Hyunseob Lim, Jaehoon Jung, Rodney S. Ruoff & Yousoo Kim, “Structurally driven one-dimensional electron confinement in sub-5-nm graphene nanowrinkles”, Nature Communications (2015), 10.1038/ncomms9601

Mentor Graphics Corporation today announced an update to the Mentor (R) Embedded Nucleus (R) real time operating system (RTOS) targeting low power, next-generation applications for connected embedded and internet of things (IoT) devices. The Nucleus RTOS supports the development of safe and secure applications utilizing the ARM (R) TrustZone (R) in Cortex (R)-A processors. The ARM TrustZone technology provides a system approach to create processor partitioning that isolates both hardware resources and software to help create a “secure” world that is protected from software attacks.

Non-secure applications are executed in the non-isolated domain – the “normal” world- without the ability to impact the applications executing in the secure world. Devices with safety and security operating requirements can isolate and execute secure applications on the Nucleus RTOS in a trusted environment with priority execution over the non-secure applications in the normal world.  Devices requiring a safe domain with dedicated peripherals for trusted applications to support secure software updates, digital rights management, and trusted payments will benefit from the hardware partitioning technology provided by the ARM TrustZone. This release of the Nucleus RTOS also includes support for low power, resource constrained IoT devices with 6LoWPAN and 802.15.4 wireless connectivity.

The explosive growth of smart IoT connected devices with the proliferation of cloud-based services places new requirements on developers to protect assets from software attacks. The ARM TrustZone enables embedded system developers to allocate system peripherals such as secure memory, crypto blocks, wireless devices, LCD screens, and more to a secure operating domain that is isolated from the remaining system. This hardware separation allows for the development of separate, secure applications on Nucleus RTOS in a trusted environment.

“For IoT and other connected applications, the expanded security and low-power connectivity features in Mentor’s Nucleus RTOS provide many of the capabilities needed for the creation of complex heterogeneous IoT systems,” stated Markus Levy, founder and president of EEMBC and The Multicore Association. “These features complement leading-edge hardware capabilities to meet the needs of today’s advanced IoT embedded systems.”

The applications in the secure world have access to all the system resources while a secure monitor acts to ensure the priority execution over the non-secure normal world applications. The secure monitor provides complete isolation to allow for the execution of bare-metal, Linux (R) or Nucleus RTOS-based applications in the normal world without impacting the safe Nucleus RTOS-based applications in the secure world.  The Nucleus RTOS with ARM TrustZone makes it possible to selectively secure peripherals and applications for system isolation to meet safety and security requirements.

“Nucleus RTOS support for ARM TrustZone provides system developers with the ability to meet the highest levels of safety and security for critical applications for heterogeneous OS-based systems,” states Scot Morrison, general manager of runtime solutions, Mentor Graphic Embedded Systems Division, “ARM TrustZone isolates the general purpose operating system, bare metal or Nucleus RTOS in the normal world from the secure application running in Nucleus RTOS in the secure world.”

IoT wearables, portable medical devices, home automation systems, and other smart connected devices are routinely designed with limited system resources to reduce power consumption and extend battery life. Designed for low data rate IP-driven communication, IPv6 over Lower Power Wireless Personal Area Network (6LoWPAN) is an adaptation layer that can be used to connect resource-limited IoT devices to the internet using IP network links like Ethernet, WiFi, or low power wireless connections. The Nucleus RTOS enables the development of IoT devices with 6LoWPAN to allow the low power exchange of data using TCP, UDP, CoAP transport protocols with compatible application layer security protocols such as DTLS. The use of IPv6 addressing allows every IoT device to have a routable IP address to facilitate internet and cloud access using the standard IP network infrastructure. For low power devices, embedded IoT developers can use 6LoWPAN over 802.15.4 wireless communication. With the Nucleus RTOS, IoT end nodes can be connected, monitored and updated using cloud-based services.

Electrons are so 20th century. In the 21st century, photonic devices, which use light to transport large amounts of information quickly, will enhance or even replace the electronic devices that are ubiquitous in our lives today. But there’s a step needed before optical connections can be integrated into telecommunications systems and computers: researchers need to make it easier to manipulate light at the nanoscale.

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have done just that, designing the first on-chip metamaterial with a refractive index of zero, meaning that the phase of light can travel infinitely fast.

In this zero-index material there is no phase advance, instead it creates a constant phase, stretching out in infinitely long wavelengths. (Credit: Peter Allen, Harvard SEAS)

In this zero-index material there is no phase advance, instead it creates a constant phase, stretching out in infinitely long wavelengths. (Credit: Peter Allen, Harvard SEAS)

This new metamaterial was developed in the lab of Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Area Dean for Applied Physics at SEAS, and is described in the journal Nature Photonics.

“Light doesn’t typically like to be squeezed or manipulated but this metamaterial permits you to manipulate light from one chip to another, to squeeze, bend, twist and reduce diameter of a beam from the macroscale to the nanoscale,” said Mazur. “It’s a remarkable new way to manipulate light.”

Although this infinitely high velocity sounds like it breaks the rule of relativity, it doesn’t. Nothing in the universe travels faster than light carrying information — Einstein is still right about that. But light has another speed, measured by how fast the crests of a wavelength move, known as phase velocity. This speed of light increases or decreases depending on the material it’s moving through.

When light passes through water, for example, its phase velocity is reduced as its wavelengths get squished together. Once it exits the water, its phase velocity increases again as its wavelength elongates. How much the crests of a light wave slow down in a material is expressed as a ratio called the refraction index — the higher the index, the more the material interferes with the propagation of the wave crests of light. Water, for example, has a refraction index of about 1.3.

When the refraction index is reduced to zero, really weird and interesting things start to happen.

In a zero-index material, there is no phase advance, meaning light no longer behaves as a moving wave, traveling through space in a series of crests and troughs. Instead, the zero-index material creates a constant phase — all crests or all troughs — stretching out in infinitely long wavelengths.  The crests and troughs oscillate only as a variable of time, not space.

This uniform phase allows the light to be stretched or squished, twisted or turned, without losing energy. A zero-index material that fits on a chip could have exciting applications, especially in the world of quantum computing.

“Integrated photonic circuits are hampered by weak and inefficient optical energy confinement in standard silicon waveguides,” said Yang Li, a postdoctoral fellow in the Mazur Group and first author on the paper. “This zero-index metamaterial offers a solution for the confinement of electromagnetic energy in different waveguide configurations because its high internal phase velocity produces full transmission, regardless of how the material is configured.”

The metamaterial consists of silicon pillar arrays embedded in a polymer matrix and clad in gold film. It can couple to silicon waveguides to interface with standard integrated photonic components and chips.

“In quantum optics, the lack of phase advance would allow quantum emitters in a zero-index cavity or waveguide to emit photons which are always in phase with one another,” said Philip Munoz, a graduate student in the Mazur lab and co-author on the paper.  “It could also improve entanglement between quantum bits, as incoming waves of light are effectively spread out and infinitely long, enabling even distant particles to be entangled.”

“This on-chip metamaterial opens the door to exploring the physics of zero index and its applications in integrated optics,” said Mazur.

The paper was co-authored by Shota Kita, Orad Reshef, Daryl I. Vulis, Mei Yin and Marko Loncar, the Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering.